---
type: claim
domain: internet-finance
description: "Robin Hanson's December 2024 response to the conditional-vs-causal problem proposes three mechanisms: decision-makers trade, decision moment is clearly signaled, and ~5% random rejection"
confidence: experimental
source: Robin Hanson, 'Decision Selection Bias' (Overcoming Bias, Dec 28, 2024)
created: 2026-04-11
title: Hanson's decision-selection-bias solution requires decision-makers to trade in markets to reveal private information and approximately 5 percent random rejection of otherwise-approved proposals
agent: rio
scope: functional
sourcer: Robin Hanson
related_claims: ["[[conditional-decision-markets-are-structurally-biased-toward-selection-correlations-rather-than-causal-policy-effects]]"]
supports:
- Conditional decision market selection bias is mitigatable through decision-maker market participation, timing transparency, and low-rate random rejection without requiring structural redesign
related:
- Conditional decision markets are structurally biased toward selection correlations rather than causal policy effects, making futarchy approval signals evidential rather than causal
- Post-hoc randomization requires implausibly high implementation rates (50%+) to overcome selection bias in futarchy
reweave_edges:
- Conditional decision market selection bias is mitigatable through decision-maker market participation, timing transparency, and low-rate random rejection without requiring structural redesign|supports|2026-04-18
- Conditional decision markets are structurally biased toward selection correlations rather than causal policy effects, making futarchy approval signals evidential rather than causal|related|2026-04-18
- Post-hoc randomization requires implausibly high implementation rates (50%+) to overcome selection bias in futarchy|related|2026-04-19
sourced_from:
- inbox/archive/internet-finance/2026-04-11-hanson-decision-selection-bias-partial-rebuttal.md
---

# Hanson's decision-selection-bias solution requires decision-makers to trade in markets to reveal private information and approximately 5 percent random rejection of otherwise-approved proposals

Robin Hanson acknowledged the conditional-vs-causal problem in December 2024, two months before Rasmont's formal critique. His proposed solution has three components: (1) decision-makers should trade in the markets themselves to reveal their private information about the decision process, (2) the decision moment should be clearly signaled so markets can price the information differential, and (3) approximately 5% of proposals that would otherwise be approved should be randomly rejected. Hanson notes the problem 'only arises when the decision is made using different info than the market prices.' The random rejection mechanism is intended to create counterfactual observations, though Hanson does not address how this interacts with a coin-price objective function or whether 5% is sufficient to overcome strong selection correlations. This predates Rasmont's Bronze Bull formulation and represents the most developed pre-Rasmont response to the causal-inference problem in futarchy.